


we live, but what next?

by cohobbitation



Series: now you have to live with it [2]
Category: Watchmen
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 11:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17938742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cohobbitation/pseuds/cohobbitation
Summary: Rorschach got there in time to save the Roche girl — help her save herself, really — but that doesn’t mean he knows what to do with her. Here she is, bloody-handed and her own deliverer, younger than even he was; and for some reason she sees fit to trust him.Blair’s trust scares Rorschach shitless, thank you very much.





	we live, but what next?

He does not like children. He still remembers, painfully, how raw and feral he was at that age; how cruel the others had been. Daniel says they scare the hell out of him; Daniel is right. 

This one does not care. 

She drops the knife, hiccuping tearlessly as she looks at her bloodied hands, and scrambles back from Grice’s corpse. And for an instant he thinks she’s going to flee, seeking shapeless monsters in alleyways instead of staying in the fetid, coppery presence of this fleshy one they — _she_ — have slain.

She doesn’t. She turns on him like a homing missile and then she is on his neck, latched on like a vice. Tiny ratlike paws sink their fingers into his scarf, nails pricking; he feels the face burrow under his collar, teeth bared in some unearthly keen. She is in under his armor, in under his striking range, and for an idiot animal instant all he can think is _she will rip my throat out._

The keen never resolves itself into crying, not the pretty pathetic sobs he knows children make from silver television screens back where moral codes were stricter.

In time, as Grice’s blood sinks into his pants leg and congeals, as Rorschach’s adrenaline levels settles to something that buzzes uncomfortably like too much caffeine — into something he can think through — the sound resolves into a noise he understands. A bilious sense-memory lodged high at the back of the throat, choking; a grief and a wrath too large for such a tiny body to hold.

It’s the same sound he used to make. The very same sound: a kitten trying to roar.

He flexes his fingers; has to pry his fist open one at a time. Grice’s brains are beginning to stick his hand to the cleaver handle. He releases the seal with a pop, but his whole arm still shakes.

He pats her twice between the shoulderblades before his will fails him.

“Have. Have to get out of here,” he pants, more to himself than to the bloody pup that’s tightening her grip around his windpipe. And — bold little thing, isn’t she?, he thinks, dizzily, half in awe of how she’s got him pinned where she wants him, and half in bloody screaming terror.

“Take you somewhere safe. Out of this. Daniel — Daniel will know what to do.” He prays Daniel will know what to do, because he’s out of his element here. And yet, he knows this is exactly where he’s going to stay. 

She doesn’t answer. She hangs on.

So he sets the fire one-handed.


End file.
